Family Billboard

Melissa and the boys got home from Albuquerque last night. (Side note: They brought me the biggest jar of 505 Green Chili and I can’t wait to dig into that thing tonight!) When we got the boys settled into bed we sat down on the couch and just talked about our families. We both come from amazing families. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve never met another couple who have been raised in such loving, godly families for their entire lives like we’ve been. Being a great family doesn’t exempt you from Romans 3:23. There is just no such thing as a perfect dad or mom, just like there is no such thing as a perfect kid, although my sister was pretty close.

We all pick up things from our parents. Good things and bad things. Ways of cleaning the house, or not cleaning the house. Ways of dealing with conflict, or not dealing with conflict. Attitudes, phrases, hobbies, interests, habits and even sin. Obviously, the sin of the parents (and grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents) affects children. We’re products of our environment in both nature and nurture. But whatever your current situation does not determine your destiny…

In the first 3 verses of John 9, Jesus and his disciples come across a homeless, blind beggar. The disciples ask a very obvious question: Who screwed up? Was he born poor and without sight because of his parents blunders in life or did he once have a good life and then made a bunch of poor choices and brought this calamity upon himself?

Jesus sets them straight and gives you and me a very clear directive for our kids. He says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (emphasis mine) Don’t worry about who sinned! We’ve all sinned. Your parents, your grandparents, everyone! Every single child makes poor choices in life, whether their 5 or 15. But our prayer for our kids, my prayer for my kids is that the work of God would be displayed in their life.

Think about it! You can’t change what family you belong to. You can’t change who your parents are. Parents, we get to raise our kids and train them and teach them discipline in life, but at the end of the day their decisions are just that: their decisions. Why not take the focus off of how we’ve messed up and how they’ve let us down and focus on important stuff: is God working in their life? Do they know how God is working in their life? This is a step in changing our parenting from “sin management” to truly raising them in the knowledge and love of the Lord.

I’m about 100 pages into a great book called Sticky Faith by Kara Powell and Chap Clark. Pick it up. It’s got some good things to say. Thanks for listening to my rant.

Destroying Holiday Zombies

A few years ago a trend popped up among the evangelical crowd. “Put the Christ back in Christmas” was the call. Don’t shop at any places that say happy holidays. If they don’t say Merry Christmas as you’re buying your presents go to a different store. There were t-shirts, bumper stickers and all other sorts of paraphernalia, much like the WWJD “movement” of the 90′s.

I can’t really put my finger on it, but I was a little uncomfortable about all this. It seemed a little contrived and prideful. But the fact is, we need to focus on Christ during this season, but not just in word and bumper sticker but also in deed. If faith without works is dead, what are words without faith without works? Zombies? or American Christmas shoppers?

This morning as I was looking through my calendar and realizing that Christmas is a little more than 4 weeks away I began to worry. There’s always a lot going on during the holidays, especially when you work at a church. There’s little time to shop and decorate (which I really don’t like to do, that’s why my wife is awesome), spend time with friends, have parties, etc… On top of all this my family is going to be out of town the week before Christmas, so everything is very accelerated.

It’s my desire as a parent to really teach my kids that Christmas is about more than just presents. I believe that Christmas is about Christ! And, as an ex-retail manager, I’ve seen the horrors of the holiday seasons. But, and here’s the hard part, how do we say and teach and believe and especially LIVE, that Christmas is about Christ?

Ah, tension!

So this year I want to start preparing for Christmas now. I’m looking backward to look forward in my family. With my awesome life group I want to start looking at this season as not a one day event. We need the whole time. The liturgical church calls that Advent. I grew up baptist, so my experience with advent was a calendar my mom but on the wall with pockets that she would put toys in (I miss that thing). I don’t really know what we’re going to do. I’ve got a few resources for my family and my group but to be honest, I have no clue what it actually looks like!

If you want more information I’ll keep you posted (as much as I can) about this. I found a good blog post about advent and the history of it: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2002/dec6.html

I’ve got a book called Alternative Worship and YouVersion.com has an Advent Bible reading plan. I haven’t talked to my wife about it so, shhhh, don’t tell her.

Let me know if you have some stuff that your family does during this season to focus on Jesus and the expectation and hope that this season should bring. I’d love to hear it!

a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, and forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:9 & 10

Verbs. Important little words in our lives. Remember madlibs? Where nouns add the subject and object, verbs are really where its at! They not only provide action but also emotion and life to our sentences. Try to read that verse with out the verbs:

____ must be sincere. ____ what is evil; ____ to what is good. Be ____ to one another in love. ____ one another above yourselves.

Verbs are even powerful when you read them by themselves! Much more than nouns ever can be.

Love

Quick, what do you see in your mind?

Hate

What about now?

Cling

What image does that conjure up?

Devoted

Anything there?

Honor

That one is really a double edged sword!

If you had to fill in the verbs in your day, what would you say? Do you like that verb or do you want to swap it out for another one?

Holi-Dazed

It’s hard to believe, but Christmas is right around the corner again! I love the holiday time: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, etc… There is something nice about everyone in our culture being on the same page that this time of the year is different than others. We might not all agree “why” it is different, but we all agree it is different.

I was reminded this morning of something while I was taking Emery to kindergarten. Before I say what it is I wan’t to encourage you and say this shouldn’t cause guilt but action. At least it did in me. Here it is…

I only have 11 Christmases to spend with Emery before he gets his driver’s license!

Crazy, right?  Like I said, I don’t feel guilty about this but excited and here are a few reasons why…

1. I love watching my kids grow up! They say and do really funny things now and we’ve thought about writing them all down but honestly, they’re so crazy, I don’t see it stopping. Plus, I’m excited to see them discover more and more about who God has made them to be.

2. A special thanks to the leadership and people of The Crossing Church for giving all of us staffers 8 days off starting Christmas day. I love the fact that we believe families are so important that we’re willing to set the example of setting aside time to be with your family. Speaking of family

3. I’ve got an awesome family that is willing to travel down to the sunshine state to all be together this year! That’s right, the Levrets takeover begins December 23rd!

What are you going to do this year to make this holiday time super special for your family? Let me know if you’ve got some good ideas.

Pattern Fragmentation

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.”

The use of the word enemy is SO extreme here it almost hurts to read, right?!

Now, what’s weird is that no one would give you a hard time if you didn’t give up your food for someone who hates you. No one would look at you and say, “you scum! that person who tried to beat you up a second ago is thirsty! I can’t believe you would let them be thirsty like that!” No, instead we would all probably look at them and say, “well, they got what they deserve! They should have picked their friends better and not made so many people hate them so they could have people around to help when they needed it.”

Right?! We think, even though we’re Christians, that “what goes around, comes around.” We kind of believe in Karma, right?!

Now hold on…Doesn’t it say in the Bible some where that “you reap what you sow?” Well, yes it does. And if you wanted to use the Bible as a whip or bat or (insert weapon of choice right here) you could. But the problem with that is at the point you see your enemy down you’d just be rubbing it in or pouring salt in the wound. You’d be trying to do the job of the Holy Spirit , trying to bring conviction into their lives, well maybe not conviction but certainly judgement. And then you get in that cycle of you reaping what you’ve sown. So if you sow judgement, guess what you’re going to get! That’s right, boys and girls, more judgement!

So, in order to start a new harvest of love and joy and hope and peace and hospitality, pull up the thorns and weeds of bitterness and anger and revenge in your life and feed your dad gum enemy when he’s hungry! (drop mic and walk off stage)

A Few Observations From the #uncoversummit

This week I had the amazing opportunity to go to a conference hosted by the American Bible Society. The purpose was to discuss how to engage this next generation in the Bible. There were some amazing presenters that came and God ignited some new passions in me and rekindled some old ones. Here are just a few thoughts from the conference.

Facebook is great and creepy at the same time! A guy named Mark Brown talked about the use of social media. If you’ve never heard of him don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either. He has over 8 million likes on a Facebook page he created. It’s the Bible page of course. What was really crazy was he posted John 3:16 on the wall and within, and I am NOT exaggerating, 1 minute had 1600 likes on it. Within 10 minutes it was up to 10,000 likes and a few hundred comments. As I write this, not 2 days later that same post has 43,576 likes, 1,057 comments and 2,097 shares. That’s crazy, right?! OK, so an observation

#1: The Bible and new media (web, social, search, blog, etc…). The CEO of Global Media Outreach likened the internet to the Roman Road system, the actual roads they built, not the Bible passages to lead someone to Jesus, you Baptist! The Roman military built these nice fancy roads to move their army all over the world, once they did that the merchants moved in and started trading with people from different parts of Europe. Not long after that a group of people left Jerusalem for fear of being put to death, traveled on those very roads and made disciples of Jesus as they went. The internet followed the same trend: built for military use, opened up to commerce and now God’s word is spreading around the globe at a faster rate than ever!

#2: The hymn Come Thou Fount makes me cry every time I hear it.

Kara Powell leads the research department at the Fuller Youth Institute. She tracked hundreds of kids as they moved from High School to College with their engagement in the church. I was very excited to see what she was going to present and I was not disappointed! I’ve got a whole new arsenal of preacher one liners just from her! But here’s what gut-checked me the most about her talk:

#3: Intergenerational Community builds sticky faith in kids. She said too many kids leave high school having experienced youth group but not the Church. There are a few “mickey mouse,” “dry cleaner” and “kid’s table” references that I could add here but it boils down to this. Parents, if your kids don’t see your faith and the faith of other godly adults LIVED out through serving, community and even Church Services (yea, I said it!) then how can we expect them to develop their own!? It’s time to bring kids and adults together around the Scripture and see what it says for our community, not just for us individually.

There were tons of great things that I’m taking away from this experience and I’ve got some plans, baby! I’ll write some more stuff I’ve gleaned from this week as it comes to me. Peace!

Romans 12:3-8

I was thinking about this last night so I thought I’d share…Romans 12:3-8

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.7 If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; 8 if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

A couple quick observations:

1. We’ve always heard that grace is something that God has given us, right? But in verse 3 it says that grace AND faith have been given to us. That’s kind of weird. I always thought grace was something God did and faith was something I did but apparently not. God’s grace and my faith both belong to God. And here I am with…well…nothing…that’s good right?

2. Verse 6 starts this idea of using your gifts. But it has that little grace/faith element in it. “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.” That’s the same faith and the same grace that God has given. Oh yeah, and the same gifts. Let’s not forget about those.

Some application:

If God gives the grace, the gifts and the faith what do I do? Still working on that one, when I figure it out I’ll let you know. *psssttt* I think it has to do with verses 1 & 2, something about offer your body as a living sacrifice…

So, as a leader my prayer for people is not give them gifts. It’s not get them to serve/operate in their gifts. It’s not that they would be smarter or more committed or even more like me! My prayer is that God would give them more faith. So…

God, thank you for your grace and your gifts but I need more faith. Please instill in us a supernatural ability to trust you no matter what our natural circumstances look like. Amen

Acts 5:1-11

The Life Journal reading this morning was in Acts Chapter 5. I’ve read this account of Ananias and Sapphira before but this morning it raised some questions or uneasiness or something…don’t know what. I decided to dig in and see what some others had to say about this. I found an article that I thought was good and one part of that article really struck me.

Here’s a long section about miracles that he writes. If you want to read the whole thing here’s a link. I’ll mark a couple places that got my attention…

What are miracles?  In essence a miracle is a restoration back to the way things are supposed to be.  They are a sign of God’s “shalom”, his peace and restoration coming upon an individual or situation which is broken by the Fall.  It is interesting to note that before and after our text, Luke tells us about miraculous healings which the apostles and in particular Peter, were enabled to perform.  In Acts 3 we read an account in which Peter healed a man who had been crippled from birth.  Immediately after the incident in our text it says in Acts 5:15 that the apostles healed so many others that people brought their sick into the streets so that “at least Peter’s shadow might fall on them” as they lay in the street.  Miracles should not be regarded as “extraordinary” signs.  They are reaffirmations of the normativity of the good creation order which is restored in Christ.

Kind of interesting, eh? What do you think?

BL

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

This might be weird, but this is the verse that spoke to me today in our Life Journal reading. Ecclesiastes 9:4-12

4 Anyone who is among the living has hope—even a live dog is better off than a dead lion!

5 For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten.

6 Their love, their hate
and their jealousy have long since vanished;
never again will they have a part
in anything that happens under the sun.
7 Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do.8 Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil.9 Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun.

10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.

11 I have seen something else under the sun:
The race is not to the swift
or the battle to the strong,
nor does food come to the wise
or wealth to the brilliant
or favor to the learned;
but time and chance happen to them all.

12 Moreover, no man knows when his hour will come:
As fish are caught in a cruel net,
or birds are taken in a snare,
so men are trapped by evil times
that fall unexpectedly upon them.

Alright, that’s long and it might be a little depressing but have you ever gone through times of just strait out confusion? Where the question that keeps coming to your mind is “what’s the point of all this”? It’s not that you’re unhappy or depressed but you just feel contemplative.

Sometimes we feel as Christians that the feeling of confusion is wrong. That we have to have all the answers all the time and if we don’t life is going to be flipt on it’s head. So what! What if life doesn’t make sense!? Is that so bad?

Time marches on whether we want it to or not. The sun comes up and the sun goes down. You go to bed and you get up in the morning. So you’ve got 3 choices as this is:

1. Close your eyes and miss it. Get overwhelmed and check out of life. Always think about how great the old days were, even though they were the same, you were just a few pounds lighter.

2. Look past it to the future, either eternally (heaven and such) or just focus too much on tomorrow and miss today. Worry can take over. Planning and over planning takes over and you miss everything going around you today.

3. Or, and this is the good one, you open your eyes and you look at what God has brought you today. It goes beyond being thankful. Thankful can be a copout said as an automatic or a forced, clenched-teeth response with none of the right attitudes behind it. Opening you’re eyes and being aware of the Life that is around you takes practice and the fundamental understanding that life is short. A passing vapor (actually that’s what “meaningless” means in Ecclesiastes, not without meaning, just temporary).

My kids will be this age today and today alone. If I miss today I will never, EVER get it back! The opportunity that you have with your wife is today. Enjoy it.

To quote Jesus: Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Current Events

This morning I woke up to the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed. I follow a wide range of people on twitter and I wanted to get the reaction of the news. Someone I follow stated that “if you’re not rejoicing then you should be kicked out of America.” Another person quoted proverbs 24:17 “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice.”

It’s a very surreal feeling to think that someone you’ve always heard is Public Enemy #1 is dead. How you feel about this event; happy, confused, doubtful, thankful, sad; may have to do with your definition of the word justice. I hear terms in my circles like “social justice” or “a just God”.

Is justice killing a person who has killed? Will that stop terrorist activity all over the world? Why do we seek justice? Is it to make everyone who has done something wrong pay? Or is it to help those who need helping?

I couldn’t help but think of the sermon on the mount. I think seeking justice means working to create a world where you don’t even think about murdering (Matt 5:21 & 22). I know it sounds far fetched but hey, that was Jesus’ style, right? Turn the other cheek, Love your enemies, don’t do stuff to get credit from your peers, etc…

I think our prayer today is that of every other day: Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is heaven. Give us today our daily bread, forgive us of our sins just as we have forgiven those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation. Amen.

What are your thoughts on this?